


Poetry & Prose

by CynicalRainbows



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Fluff, Found Family, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Poetry, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24589729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynicalRainbows/pseuds/CynicalRainbows
Summary: In which Cathy suffers from Guilt and Jane discovers poetry.
Relationships: Catherine Parr & Jane Seymour
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	Poetry & Prose

**Author's Note:**

> The poems mentioned in this fic are (in order of mention Her Kind by Anne Sexton, an extract from Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, On A Train by Wendy Cope, The Dormouse and The Doctor by A A Milne and The Past by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.) Wendy Cope is absolutely recommended if you’re not a fan of poetry in general- her poems are very simple, and all the more effective for that simplicity. The dormouse poem I recommend if you wish to have your heart torn into shreds- yes, it’s technically a children’s poem but even thinking about the absolutely tragic plight of the sad dormouse still makes me tear up to this day. Literally no other piece of poetry has ever affected me so deeply so I’ve just projected that onto Cathy.
> 
> In regards to the brief mention of Thomas and Elizabeth….I do sometimes think the case gets examined in a slightly….I don’t want to say unfair way but a way that applies modern understandings of things and modern expectations to a time that was wildly different. Specifically, during a time when it was entirely legal to beat your wife and divorce for women was not an option, what else would you do in a similar situation, other than sending the victim away?
> 
> Anyhow, I hope you all enjoy this fic!

‘I have gone out, a poss- poss-’

‘Possessed.’

‘Possessed witch, h- haunting the black air, braver at night, dreaming evil, I have done my hitch-’

She pauses.

‘What does it mean?’

‘Hm?

‘What does  _ done my hitch _ mean?’

She thinks of horses-  _ All hitched up; I’ll just hitch up the cart _ , words she’d only overheard in her first life since the tending of horses with none of her concern back then, and words she’d heard not at all in her second, since no one seemed to ride much nowadays. And  _ getting hitched _ ,  _ hitched up _ \- Anne had told her that it meant ‘marriage’ nowadays. 

Neither meaning seems to fit here though.

Cathy takes the book and scans the line herself, her brow creasing, which makes her feel vindicated. Cathy is never, ever patronising on purpose, and she can tell that she takes especial care never to reply to a question as if the answer is obvious (even when it is) but even so, it pleases her when Cathy has to actually consider her answer before she gives it.

‘Mmmm… A spell, I think. Or a period of time.’

She sounds disinterested, lacklustre, even though this is usually the sort of question Cathy enjoys: usually, they’d debate it back and forth until they’d come up with an answer between them.

Now though, Cathy answers like she just wants to get on.

‘I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light-’

She’s reading slowly to make sure she doesn’t stumble but it’s alright- it’s one of the reasons that she enjoys reading poetry, because it’s one of the rare, precious times when reading quickly doesn’t matter. In fact speed (as Cathy has told her over and over) is actually a  _ bad _ thing, especially if you’re reading a poem that’s unfamiliar.

‘It just means that you have to read it again because you’ve missed the meaning. Much better to read slowly so you can _ absorb _ it.’

And they do absorb it- it’s become their  _ thing.  _ Cathy’s the only queen with an unending appetite for poetry; she’s the only queen who reads slowly as a matter of course (she likes to focus on that rather than on the fact that she’s the only queen who needs to practise reading aloud) and so in this, they’re well matched.

Reading the poetry slowly doesn’t make her feel humiliated in the way that reading prose slowly does, and being able to argue over the meaning of whatever they’re reading- over the word choice and the subject and the  _ feel  _ of it- after she’s finished is her reward. It stops her feeling like a child because although Cathy is undoubtedly the better reader, they’re equals when it comes to interpretation, and that’s another reason she enjoys it.

Not that she’d taken Cathy seriously when she’d first suggested it.

(‘Practise makes all the difference, you know.’

She was sitting in the windowseat of the bedroom she shared with Catalina, back in the first house, hot-eyed and burning with embarrassment and steadfastly trying to ignore Cathy’s presence next to her.

‘It needn’t even be for long.’

She’d had to fight to keep her voice even.

‘There’s no point. I’m no good at it, I’m no good at any of it.’

‘True.’ Cathy’s bluntness sometimes makes her laugh- then it had made her want to cry. ‘But you don’t have to be. You can get better at it, but only if you actually work at it.’

‘I am working at it.’

‘I know- and it’s good you’re going to classes, I’m glad Anna suggested them but….you need to practise at home too.’

‘I do.’

‘With someone else it’ll be more effective. I can help with the hard bits.’

‘Cathy. I know you mean well. But I don’t want you to feel like you need to- to teach me like I’m a child.’

Cathy had shrugged. ‘That’s ok, I understand. Would it help if we didn’t think of it as teaching though? Because honestly I don’t want to think of it as teaching either. Too much pressure and I’d worry I wasn’t doing it right and-’

‘What would you call it then?’

‘How about….two friends who just happen to get together sometimes to read together?’

Jane had shaken her head. ‘You wouldn’t enjoy the sort of books I’m reading.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of books.’ Cathy held up the slim volume in her hand. ‘I was thinking of this. Poetry is MEANT to be read aloud but it’s too weird just doing it on my own.’

‘I’m not really into poetry.’

‘Why not?’

The idea had stumped her a bit, she’d never had to defend herself like this before. ‘I’m just not. I can’t understand it.’

‘No one’s meant to understand it, not the first time anyway. That’s part of the fun of it.’

‘And I read too slowly anyway, you’d be just as bored.’

‘Poetry is meant to be read slowly.’

‘Mmm. Yes. Sure.’

‘No, really! Listen-’

Cathy flipped the book open. ‘I’m looking for something short….ok, this’ll do-’ She’d sat up a little straighter and began to read quickly, flatly, as if she was reading from the newspaper, an account of something: ‘You tell me to lie down, cause my opinions make me less beautiful-’

The first line interested her but she had been distracted too because even she could tell that there’s something wrong about how Cathy was doing it- she’d felt rushed.

‘Do it again.’

‘Why?’

‘You were too quick-’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’ She’d felt deflated- had Cathy just been trying to prove her point because now she’d felt tricked and cheated- but then Cathy had put the book into her own hands, open on the page.

‘You read it.’

She’d tried to push it away.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Don’t you want to hear it again?’

‘Yes-’ And she did. Something about it had struck her in a deep inside place:  _ My opinions make me less beautiful.  _ A memory teased her until she grabbed at it: Henry’s cold, closed up face when she’d screwed up her courage and begged for mercy for Robert Aske and the Pilgrimage of Grace. She’d been less beautiful to him that day, she was sure.

‘So read it. I’ll help if you get stuck on a word. And there’s only us here, no one else is listening.’

Still, she hesitated.

‘It’ll sound better when you read it, I promise you. Just give it a try. Please.’

It’s the  _ please _ that did it, because she’s never able to say no to people when they use it. Even when she should. (Henry had said  _ please _ when he’d asked for her hand- the first and last time he’d ever used it with her. She should have said no.)

‘Ok.’

‘You tell me to quiet down-’

It turned out actually to not be too hard to read, she’d only hesitated briefly over ‘tongue’. And oddly enough, she’d found that Cathy was  _ right.  _ It did sound better, somehow- perhaps because she was reading so slowly that she had time to take in each word, like bricks being added to a wall, one by one, each making the whole a little more complete.

‘-difficult to forget but not easy for the mind to follow.’

She’d closed the book on the last word and seen Cathy beaming at her. ‘You see? You see?’

Reluctantly, she’d nodded- but she hadn’t been able help a smile twitching the corners of her own lips too. ‘I see.’)

She hadn’t taken Cathy seriously when Cathy had told her that maybe she could like poetry, because she’d believed she couldn’t- she associated with confusion, with trouble. (They had said that Anne had had poems dedicated to her at Court, so many that it had caused a stir and then more than a stir. She hadn’t been able to trust poetry after she’d heard that.)

The poems Cathy has her read aren’t like that though- they have easy, simple words and some of them aren’t about anything much but they manage to make her feel things in a way that she’d never imagined printed words would be able to do.

There’s one that Cathy shows her, about riding in a train, that makes her want to cry for the soft simplicity of it, of how it reminds her of the peaceful feeling of watching the scenery as Kitty sleeping against her shoulder when they have to travel for an interview. It surprises her- she didn’t think that poetry could be that easy.

But now Cathy doesn’t look as if she finds it easy. She just looks tired.

‘-my ribs crack where your wheels wind-’ She reads on. It occurs to her that on a normal day, she’d be more focused on the words, about how they remind her of how she’d writhed and strained so hard giving birth that it had felt as if her own ribs were splintering in her chest- but now she’s more preoccupied with Cathy’s wan, drawn face.

‘A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind.’

It’s only as she finishes that she realises Cathy’s eyes are glistening with tears- and although it’s not as if she’s never seen Cathy cry over a poem before, this doesn’t feel like last time.

(She’d thought Cathy had been joking.

‘How can this be the saddest poem in the world?’

Cathy had blinked at her, brushing at her eyes. ‘Because it IS. Doesn’t it make YOU feeling like crying?’

‘Not...really.’ She had wondered if there was some hidden meaning to it that had affected Cathy so, but she wasn’t sure how there COULD be. ‘It’s a children’s poem.’

‘That doesn’t mean it isn’t TRAGIC!’ Cathy looked genuinely sad. ‘Jane, the dormouse has to live FOREVER in the wrong sort of flowerbed, just because the doctor wouldn’t listen to what he actually wanted!’

Jane had shrugged. ‘Yes but- Cathy, love, it’s a children’s poem. It’s not meant to make you get this upset.’

‘Ugh, you sound just like Catalina.’ Cathy had picked up her copy of  _ When We Were Very Young _ and left the room in a huff.)

This isn’t the same though- because rather than trying to explain herself, Cathy just looks wearily resigned.

‘Are you alright love?’

‘Fine.’ Cathy blinks a couple of times but the tears spill over, rather than disappearing like she’d obviously hoped they would.

‘No you’re not.’ 

Cathy sniffs and doesn’t respond; Jane edges closer and wraps an arm around her shoulders, hoping that she won’t pull away.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s nothing, it’s silly.’

‘More silly than crying because a dormouse had to sleep in a bed of daffodils?’

Despite the tears still sliding down her cheeks, Cathy gives a short laugh. ‘They were chrysanthemums, actually. And yes.’

‘Well then’ She tightens her hold and Cathy rests her head against her shoulder. ‘Now you really do need to tell me love, because I’m fascinated.’

‘That's the thing. It really is nothing. I just feel really-’ Cathy searches for the word.’ You know like the opposite of rose tinted glasses?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like that. Just- tired and flat and pointless. And I don’t know why. The poem was just the last straw- it reminded me of, of how much I ruined by dying when I did….how many things could have been fixed if I hadn’t-’ Cathy’s face crumples and Jane feels it like an ache. ‘I’m sorry, I said it was stupid.’

‘Cathy love, no, no, no. Oh you poor thing-’ Cathy leans into her, sniffing and Jane rocks her gently back and forth. ‘It isn’t stupid in the slightest but that doesn’t mean it’s true-’ She isn’t quite sure where she should start. ‘You can’t blame yourself for dying, that isn’t fair.’

‘But if I hadn’t-’

‘But you couldn’t help it- and goodness, even if you had-’ Jane pulls back enough to cup Cathy’s damp cheek. ‘If you had been able to control it...I hate to say it, but there’s so, so many other things that could have gone wrong, even if you had been alive to see them.’

Cathy shakes her head. ‘I left Mary all alone- you know, some historians think she could even have died of neglect because they can’t be sure she ended up somewhere safe? And Jane- she had to go back to that awful house, those terrible people, because she couldn’t be part of my household without a proper chaperone, she might not have died if I’d been there to oversee things….I never had a chance to explain to Elizabeth, I always meant for her to know that I only sent her away to keep her safe and I meant to be explain one day when we were together but I never saw her again, there wasn’t TIME….and Edward and Mary might have reconciled, perhaps they wouldn’t have been so opposed, I made them all a family when I was alive and then when I was gone, it just fell apart….’ Cathy breaks off, sobbing too hard to speak and Jane shakes her head.

‘Oh Cathy. Oh love. It’s alright, let it out.’ She waits until the tears have slowed a bit before passing over a handful of tissues.

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome. Now. Can I say what I think?’

Cathy nods, dabbing her swollen eyes.

‘Cathy. You are a wonderful, intelligent, kind, caring young woman and we are all love you and count ourselves very, very lucky to know you and have you with us, ok?’

Another tentative nod.

‘But love, you are not God. You’re not magic. You cannot possibly think that you would be able to have solved all of those problems, all of those issues, if you’d been alive. Honestly, even if you had a hundred years to try, I don’t think you’d have managed.’

Cathy looks wrong-footed. ‘But all of it- when I was alive, things were alright, they weren’t-’

‘Were they? Were they really alright? Or was it just that the problems didn’t exist yet?’

‘Well-’

‘Love, you did a wonderful job bringing the family together. But that’s so much easier when the children are- well, children. Do you see how much harder it would have been when they were adults? Edward was….seven, when you met him?’

‘Six.’ Cathy blows her nose.

‘See? He was a child. And Mary was a young woman but- well, with her father alive, even with a definite King in place….well, it would have been madness for her to double down with her beliefs the way she did. It was different when you were gone.’

‘Yes. When I was gone-’

‘No.’ She shakes her head decisively. ‘When you were gone, I said. Not because you were gone.’

Cathy contemplates for a moment and Jane pulls her closer, so that Cathy can lean against her comfortably. ‘Think love, for a minute. Did everything go to plan when you were alive? Did everything go just how you tried to make it turn out?’

Reluctantly Cathy shakes her head. ‘No. Hardly ever.’

‘So.’ Jane presses a kiss to the top of her head. ‘What makes you think it would have been any different if you’d lived longer?’ She pauses. ‘You need to let go of the blame. You need to stop torturing yourself with thinking how things could have been different- trust me, it’ll be easier when you do.’

She can see by Cathy’s expression that she understands what she means.

‘You make it sound so easy.’

‘Oh it won’t be. It isn’t. It’s always hard.’ She can say it lightly but honestly, it’s something that she doesn’t even think she’ll stop struggling with. ‘But you’ve taken the first couple of steps today….so that’s a start at least.’

‘I suppose.’ She’d be more bothered by the non-committal response if it wasn’t for the fact that she can tell by Cathy’s expression that she is actually thinking about it- only passingly now, perhaps, but later, when her tears have dried, tomorrow or the day after, she will think on it again, think about it seriously and examine the idea, and turn it over and over in her mind until she’s made peace with it.

She knows how Cathy does things after all, which is why she doesn’t push it too hard. She might not be able to read well but she knows about people.

Nestled up against her, Cathy looks even wearier and more wrung out than before but it doesn’t worry her so much as it did when she first noticed it. She smooths Cathy’s hair away from her damp face and smiles when she hums in response.

They sit in silence for a minute or two, and Jane imagines dust settling around them after a storm, normalcy returning slowly. She isn’t planning on going back to the poetry- she imaginges Cathy has probably had enough of it for one day, and then she remembers something and jerks up, dislodging Cathy from her arms and making her squeak in surprise.

‘Jane?’

‘Sorry, sorry- I just- I remembered something, something I meant to show you and I thought...it might help. You, I mean.’

Cathy looks slightly skeptical, and then she shrugs. ‘Ok. What is it?’

‘I’ll fetch it. Get comfortable while I look though because it might take a minute.’

She waits until Cathy has re-arranged the pillows and lain down properly on the the bedspread, half smiling despite herself.

‘I’m curious now-’

‘I knew you would be. Just- Oh!’ She unearths the book from under her bed, where she remembers putting it for ‘safe-keeping’ and climbs back onto the bed with it. 

And begins to read.

‘ I fling the past behind me, like a robe, worn threadbare at the seams, and out of date…’

Cathy curls back up into her side again and she smiles. ‘I have outgrown it. Where- where-’

‘Wherefore.’ Cathy’s voice is quiet; she goes on.

‘Wherefore should I weep and dwell upon its beauty-’

As she reads, she feels the tension leaving the girl next to her as she sinks into the cadence of the words.

‘-starred with gems made out of ch-ch-’

‘Chrystalled-’ Cathy’s voice is nearly a whisper now, but she can still hear it.

‘Chrystalled tears. My new robe shall be richer than the old.’ She finishes, flushed with the glow of hearing how much more confident her voice is than when they’d begun these sessions, all those months ago.

‘That’s you, Cathy. And all of us.’ She leans closer to the curly hair- Cathy’s face is buried in Jane’s cardigan but she knows she is still listening. ‘All of us, stronger than we were. You can put the past down, you don’t have to carry it with you, if it’s hurting.’

Cathy gives a tremulous nod, her face still buried and Jane kisses the top of her head..

She isn’t concerned, they can talk about it more later.

For now, she’s happy to wait until then.

  
  



End file.
